Big Internet Win: FCC Passes Net Neutrality Rules On 3-2 Vote

The Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, has approved a set of new rules on how Internet traffic is to be managed and regulated, after commissioners voted 3-2 in its favor. Many, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, have spoken of their delight at the ruling, with The Woz himself calling it a win for "the average Joe."

The crux of this vote, and the element that will prompt an immediate and strong backlash from ISPs, is that broadband is to be reclassified as a telecommunications service. This leaves it subject to much more regulation than it has hitherto been accustomed, and in no uncertain terms, takes a lot of the power out of their hands.

From here on in, broadband providers will not be able to block / speed up connections for a fee, and as such, won’t be able to make "paid prioritization" deals with purveyors of content. These deals make ISPs quite a bit of money, since a provider can strike an agreement with, say, a Netflix or a Hulu to move their content more quickly, but as a result of the Net Neutrality rules, paid peering is out of the window.

The ruling adds a number of other restrictions, including so-called interconnection deals, where content providers stump up a fee to broadband providers in order to connect to their networks. While not being outlawed, this will be scrutinized a lot more heavily, although the FCC will not be enforcing some aspects of the rules, such as price controls.

As Wozniak noted in interview with Bloomberg, the ruling does help to stem the tide of monopolization, although as you might imagine, ISPs are not too happy with the decision. The US Telecommunications Industry Association has already noted that broadband providers will be taking swift legal action against the new rules, as the fall-out from today’s events begins.

It’s hard to argue with the assessment that this is a victory for the people, and while the ruling is perhaps ahead of its time, the consensus throughout the tech community is that it’s a win for the Internet in general. Allowing ISPs to govern how the Internet is run, as many have been for a while with throttling and whatnot, is a dangerous road to be headed down, and while the debate continues to rage, we’d love to hear your thoughts and comments below.

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So what does this mean for satellite internet providers that limit allowances because they say it clogs their satellites up?

bob

nothing. speed can not be changed, not data caps.

yournot

Republicans are going to tie this up in court for decades.

Noel Hibbard

Rightfully so.. This “general conduct rule” is ridiculous. You have to look at the details. Yeah sure for the most part this is great. But like most bills these days they slipped some BS in.

John Haughey

They are trying to “fix” what’s not broken.

So, allowing a large content provider like Netflix to pay to provide a better service for their customers is bad for consumers?

Take out the traffic shaping scandal back in 2008, how many times has their been any slowdown of the internet by an ISP documented? If you noticed back then, that was resolved without government interference back then. The market decided it.

Guest

UP YOURS FEDERAL GOVERNMENT NAZIS!

Bill

You might want to read up more before posting. Plenty of people were getting slowdown or throttled.

Just google throttle Netflix and you find dozens of articles on dozens of cases.

Tim Jacobs

Allowing Netflix to pay for better service hurts consumers because then we, as consumers, pay more for netflix. ISP’s were hindered from throttling because of the old FCC provisions. Once those were challenged by Verizon, the playing field changed. If Net Neutrality fails, then it would ALLOW ISP’s to throttle, which is a bad thing. It wasnt broken, until Verizon sued and said it was. Now Net Neutrality is fixing it. I would rather see the government instill restrictions on ISP’s than ISP’s placing restrictions on consumers its directly selling to.

Andretti808

A win for the “average joe” dafuq that mean, sounds like somebody was in favor for it and was a little disappointing.

yournot

Republicans are scared as having rules like this would prevent businesses from charging you more to get to netflix, and youtube, allow ISPs to slow down their competition and redirect (think AOL back in the day) and of course allow providers to slow down anything they disagree with. For example,Comcast could slow down news articles about Comcast providing customers with poor service, or twitter, or even making it almost impossible to go to google if they want their own portal to make money. Think of it like an infinitely large library, your ISP wants to organize it so that you can find what they want you to find, faster, but make it nearly impossible for you to find anything they don’t approve of (like porn, info on their competition, or anything else). Let’s say that they speed up Fox News, so that they can keep asserting their political agenda? What then? Controlling the media is the next step to controlling the population.

Noel Hibbard

Actually it’s controlling the media that they do not want to happen and this stupid “general conduct rule” gives the FCC that power. But go ahead and spin it how ever you want. Republicans aren’t opossed to net nutrility, they are opossed to the details of this bill.